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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Why do you use the distro you use? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.

My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Guix because I love the idea behind Nix but Nixlang is the most painful language I've ever had to type out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How long have you used it and how is it?

I'm pretty curious about those kinds of distros, and don't really like how nixos is completely hosted on github (and all the drama that constantly comes from the community, and the bad documentation for many things, ...).

However, guix seems such a niche project that I feel like it can't really be used.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

About a year and a half.

To be honest it's not "easy" to use. The guiding principle behind mainline packages is that everything has to be built from source, so most somewhat unpopular things are missing from the mainline channels.

To use it like any other distro you're going to need to learn how to write packages fairly quickly. Luckily the main draw of guix is the entire OS being based on guile so once you get a little under your belt you can just read the specs from other channels to see how a package is written.

Took me maybe a week to start writing guix packages.

There's also The toybox

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Some additional nice things about guix:

Everything is guile. The system definition, the service definitions for shepherd, everything.

Shepherd is hands down the best init program I've ever used. It's just incredibly simplistic but because it just runs the guile definition you give it, you can do some incredibly complex things that systemd etc. can do as well.

The OS documentation is built into the distro, with "info guix" you get reams of configuration information for the distro without ever needing to look it up online.